The Real Power of Post-Its

Quick thoughts:

• Keep a pad of post-it notes on the bedside table
• Stick some inside the paper planner
• Have a pad of them on the desk
• Get used to scribbling, jotting, and writing ideas on them

It's not just that I'm trying to hold onto an idea, though that's part of it. I'm more forgetful at fifty than I was at twenty and I was already forgetting too many things then. Remembering the one idea I have is good. I can't write every idea passing through my mind but quickly scribbled post-its save ideas for when I can write my way into them. All this is important but not the most important reason to have those post-its available to my whim.

Writing the idea down, capturing it in the confines of that yellow square, allows me to find the two other ideas to which writing the first one down leads. Writing generates new writing because thinking generates new ideas and writing just might be the most eleveated form of thinking. (That's the sort of thought that on paper/screen makes sense but runs circles if left inside my head.)

I can stand to lose the one idea, but those other two that come to being only as a result of writing the first, I can't stand to lose them or the process that brings them about. Ideas written down beget more ideas.

Which has me thinking of a new idea. Let me grab a post-it and jot it down.